Every big bank has a house rewards card, and the First Class Travel is TD’s: the flagship of the TD Rewards program, built around the Expedia For TD booking portal. The pitch is simple. Book your trips through the portal, earn 8 points per dollar, and pay for the next trip with the points. If you already bank with TD and like one-stop booking, it is an easy card to live with.
What I want to be upfront about is the points themselves. TD Rewards is a fixed-value portal currency: 200 points = $1 on Expedia For TD bookings, and less everywhere else. The earn rates look enormous next to a Scene+ or Aeroplan card, but each point is worth a fraction as much, so read every rate at half a cent. This is a card for people who book travel through a portal and want it simple, not for points optimizers chasing business-class seats.
Welcome offer
The TD First Class Travel Visa Infinite is currently offering up to 146,000 TD Rewards Points in two pieces: 20,000 points on your first purchase, and another 126,000 once you spend $7,500 in the first 180 days. At the portal rate of 200 points = $1, the full bonus is worth about $730 toward travel booked through Expedia For TD.
TD also rebates the first-year annual fee for you and your first additional cardholder, provided you activate the card and make a purchase within three months of account opening. Stack the rebate, the $100 TD Travel Credit and the points you earn along the way, and the first-year package comfortably clears $950 in value. One catch: the offer is off the table if you activated or closed a First Class Travel account in the past 12 months.
The $7,500 in 180 days works out to $1,250 a month, doable for a household that routes groceries, bills and a trip deposit through the card, but a higher bar than the $2,000 to $3,000 most rivals ask. Miss it and you still keep the 20,000 first-purchase points.
Fees & eligibility
The card runs $139 a year, rebated for the first year (activate and make a purchase within three months), with additional cards at $50 each and the first one also rebated in year one. If you hold TD All-Inclusive Banking, the fee is waived for as long as you keep that account, the same arrangement the TD Aeroplan cards get. As a Visa Infinite product it asks for a personal income of $60,000 or household income of $100,000.
Like its Aeroplan sibling, this is not a no-foreign-fee card: it charges the standard 2.5% foreign transaction fee on purchases in another currency. Interest runs 21.99% on purchases and 22.99% on cash advances, so the usual reminder applies: the rewards only make sense if you clear the balance every month.
Earning rewards
On paper this is the highest-earning card TD sells, but every rate needs the half-cent conversion applied. At 200 points = $1, the 8 points per dollar on Expedia For TD bookings is really 4% back in travel, the 6 points on groceries, dining and transit is 3%, and the 2-point base rate is 1%.
Read that way, the rates are still respectable: 3% back on groceries and restaurants matches most premium cards, and 4% on portal-booked travel is strong. The catch is where the value can be spent. Those returns assume you redeem through Expedia For TD; cash the points out any other way and every number above shrinks.
Redeeming rewards
TD Rewards is a fixed-value program with one best answer: travel booked through Expedia For TD, where every 200 points = $1 and you can pay for all or part of a booking with points, taxes included. The portal carries the usual Expedia inventory of flights, hotels, packages and activities, and prices generally track the public Expedia site.
Outside the portal the value steps down. Book Any Way lets you apply points against travel purchased elsewhere, at roughly 250 points = $1 on the first $1,200 of a purchase, and merchandise or Amazon.ca redemptions fall to around 400 points = $1. There are no airline transfer partners, so there is no outsized redemption waiting if you play it right; half a cent per point is the ceiling.
That predictability cuts both ways. You will never be burned by dynamic award pricing, and you will never beat it either. Compare it with Scene+, which pays a flat 100 points = $1 on travel booked anywhere with no portal required, and you can see what the big TD earn rates are compensating for.
Perks & benefits
The perk list got a real upgrade in TD’s refresh of this card, headlined by four complimentary airport lounge visits a year through the Visa Airport Companion Program (powered by DragonPass), with additional visits at about US$32 each. Four visits will not cover a heavy travel year, but for the one or two trips most people take, it is the same 1,200-lounge network the pricier premium cards use.
The quieter money is the $100 TD Travel Credit: an annual credit on your first Expedia For TD booking of $500 or more on a hotel, motel, vacation rental or vacation package (flight-only bookings do not qualify). Use it every year and it covers most of the fee by itself. There is also a birthday bonus of 10% of the points you earned from spending over the previous 12 months, capped at 10,000 points, a free top-up worth up to $50 in portal value.
Insurance
The insurance package is close to a match for the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite, which is to say solid for the fee: up to $2 million in emergency medical for the first 21 days of a trip (4 days once you turn 65), plus the usual trip, baggage and rental-car coverage. As always, read the certificate of insurance before you rely on any of it, especially the short medical window for older travellers.
My take
This is the right card for a specific person: you bank with TD, you book your trips online anyway, and you want the rewards handled without homework.
I would not point a points optimizer here, and I doubt TD would mind me saying so. TD Rewards tops out at half a cent per point, there are no transfer partners, and the best value is locked inside one booking portal. But judge the card on its own terms and it holds up: a 146,000-point welcome with the first year free, an effective 3% back on groceries and dining, a $100 travel credit that covers most of the fee, and now four lounge visits at a price where lounge access is rare. Get it if you hold TD All-Inclusive Banking or book through Expedia anyway; skip it if you want flexible points or you spend a lot in other currencies, because the 2.5% foreign fee is still here.
The good
- Up to 146,000 points with the first year free
- $100 travel credit plus 4 lounge visits
- Effective 3% back on groceries, dining and transit
The catch
- Points top out at 200 points = $1, portal-locked
- Charges the 2.5% foreign transaction fee
- Best rates capped at $25,000 per category